Wild vs. Hatchery Fish: a Wicked Problem
We toured salmons’ journey from Twisp WA to Newport OR. Their journey is treacherous and multi-faceted. Are there solutions?
On day 25 of our expedition, we met with a man named John Crandell (shown above); who is an aquatic ecologist and is monitoring program coordinator at Methow Salmon Recovery Foundation in Twisp, Washington. John showed us a riparian area restoration site while teaching us about the history of Twisp. He described the impacts of exploitative humans (post-imperializing America) that have affected fish and beaver populations due to trappers and logging; and described numbers of species lost through habitat alterations after colonization. A question that he asked rhetorically has stuck with me throughout the trip. Now, on day 95 I’m still thinking about it: “Should the decline of wild fish be ok if we replace them with hatchery fish?” While we were in Twisp, we were just at the beginning of the fish’s journey. Twisp is a headwater where fish will spawn, they then travel down through the Methow River into the Columbia and finally to a confluence at Astoria and into the Pacific Ocean. Now, having seen the road they travel, I have some thought provoking questions.
Fish have struggles. I’m not even sure how to start talking about how many struggles they have. I will just mention a couple of the big ones. Like John Crandell did, I’ll start with colonization. We have intervened and changed the dynamic ecosystems that have sustained healthy fish populations for centuries. Colonizers stole from indigenous people who were living in harmony with the landscape and exploited the many flora and fauna for economic gain. Now that’s broad because we changed so much when we came to this land, but with rivers specifically (the fish’s road) we channelized, straightened, and simplified the complex habitat of winding rivers to be easier to send logs down to build towns and so on. Those winding and complex river habitats were how fish evolved to stay alive. Think about it… if one of our roads is blocked by say some construction (or for metaphors sake, a dam); we would just detour down another street and meet up with our primary route down the road. This is exactly how fish were using the complex river systems as well, but we focused those rivers to work for man’s needs. Man changed the system to be simple and dammed the simplified rivers giving no other opportunities for the fish to get back to their spawning beds (redds). Colonization has had a huge impact, but what about Climate Change? Human influence has warmed and dried up many rivers and important waterways for fish. Both wild and native salmon/trout/fish struggle to live because the waters are too warm, the habitat too degraded. Somehow fish still make it from the reds to the Pacific Ocean.
We followed the “fish road” to the Pacific at Newport Oregon, where we met with a woman named Angee Doerr, who was in charge of educational outreach for industrial fisheries and Marine resources. We got the opportunity to tour an industrial fishing dock while she taught us about the seasons of fishing and how fisher people must monitor where they are fishing and what they catch so that they don’t kill what they don’t mean to sell or don’t catch or kill fish that will produce more fish. Very frequently in both the past and present there are very environmentally harmful ways of catching fish. For example, we saw so many gigantic nets (the size was seriously insane I had no real understanding of the size until I was standing 20 feet from it) that drag on the ocean floor and pick up sediment and catch all sorts of fish. Much of what was caught was not the target of the net, but those creatures end up dying and ground up for no purpose. There are no markets for the collateral damage. The industry must be mindful about how many fish (endangered and not) are making it back to the redds so that they can continue a sustainable harvest. What my thoughts were the entire tour was about why we devote so much energy and micromanaging to a diverse and interconnected system that has been evolving and operating on its own for millions of years? Why are we replacing their system with man-made hatchery systems? Why don't we devote time, energy, and money to taking care of wild fish and not depend on hatcheries to feed people? Does man’s involvement in manipulating rivers to “help” fish all start because man began making decisions based on their own interest ONLY and not considering the interconnected nature of the world and its inhabitants?
We are now faced with a wicked problem. We have been operating with the hatcheries for so long, and the demand for a certain amount of fish is much much greater than what could be sustained by a strictly wild fish population. There are a few very valid sides to this wicked problem. On one hand, there is the issue that the fish are very important to many indigenous peoples and the wild population of many fish have been decimated by many post colonizer-made obstacles. There is the issue that fish is a very healthy part of a good diet. Man will eat fish. But do we respect what it takes to bring that fish to our tables? On another hand, the fishing industry, hatchery industry and all the jobs that depend on cooking/ selling/ showing fish would be affected if we were to switch to only wild fish. What I’m left to think about after the trip has ended is how, as a white person, I will never have the same home place connection that an indigenous person has with these landscapes. How can we make reparations for neglecting indigenous perspectives but also not neglect the needs of those who have built their livelihood around the business of fishing? Which is getting priority, human or wild? As a human, what can I do?
Well stated. Thanks.